Kathryn Rose "Kate" Taylor, who turned the town of Clatskanie
chess-crazy, was a woman who brought about change and had fun doing
it.

"She had a great sparkle about her," said book editor and
humorist Margie Culbertson, who considered Taylor "a kindred
spirit."

Culbertson said she was "just stunned" to learn of Taylor's
death April 3 at age 54 at her home in Clatskanie.

Her death from a massive heart attack was "completely, suddenly
a shock to everyone," said Taylor's sister, Chris Syverson.
Taylor's husband, Warren, has been undergoing chemotherapy for lung
cancer. The family - which includes Taylor's four children and five
grandchildren - had been focusing on his illness, Syverson
said.

"It's just really changed our perspective on everything."

She said her sister was "very creative," funny and frequently
surprising.

When she turned 40, Taylor decided to shed her birth name, Donna
Louise Colvin, in favor of her nom de plume.

"She always decided she would be a writer under a different
name," Syverson said. "When she turned 40, she said, ‘Heck with it,
I'm changing my name!' It was a huge adjustment for the
family."

She wrote a weekly Web column, "Snickerdoodles," inspired by
observations of family and other people she knew, Syverson said.
Some of her work appeared in magazines and newspapers, including
The Daily News' Second Half.

In one Snickerdoodle she asked her son Michael what he wanted
for his 13th birthday:

"Well ..." he said, "I'll give you a hint. It has batteries, a
trigger, shoots liquid and has a refillable chamber."

She gave him a Swiffer WetJet.

In a Second Half column in 2004, she described her traumatic
change at learning she was about to become a grandmother: "Within
hours I developed an overwhelming urge to crochet something. Within
weeks, my arms got shorter, newsprint shrank and I started sitting
really low in the car and driving badly."

A story about her brother-in-law's mishap with a walleye won the
2003-04 "Best Very Short Humor" category in an international humor
writing competition Culbertson sponsors on her Web site, "Humor and
Life, in Particular." The story, "Something Fishy," appears in
"Laugh Your Shorts Off," a collection of humor published in
December.

In Taylor's story, a walleye suddenly leapt out of the water and
smacked a hapless fisherman right between the eyes:

"Wally had attained the ultimate revenge for a walleye fish,"
she wrote. "Because there he was, thrashing wildly, suspended from
the end of Bob's nose. The walleye Northland Lipstick jib with the
double barbed hook had certainly done its job! ... Wally and Bob
had become one, leaving Bob with a wriggling nose ring of giant
proportions."

Her sister said Taylor was a clown in earlier years, which
developed into face painting. That led to face reading — what
characteristics such as eyebrow shape tell about personality — and
she wrote a book on the subject.

Taylor taught face reading and Web design in Clatskanie schools,
but she is known most as the woman who turned Clatskanie kids on to
chess.

Taylor's son Mike, then 9, started the club in 1999 at the
suggestion of his parents, who were tired of his always pestering
them for a game. Eight years later, Taylor told The Daily News that
roughly 600 of Clatskanie's 1,000 students played chess.

In 2006 Taylor secured a $3,000 grant from America's Foundation
for Chess to place chess equipment in Clatskanie classrooms and to
teach educators how to weave the game into curriculum at the
elementary school. The program has since grown to include second-
through eighth-grade students.

Six years ago she co-founded the Oregon Scholastic Chess
Federation, with a goal of bringing chess to every child in
Oregon.

"I won't even venture to guess how many children she touched,"
Syverson said. "I'm sure others who are involved will carry on, but
I don't know if they'll do it with such panache."

Friends and family have been leaving flowers all week at
Checkmate Park in downtown Clatskanie.

A celebration of her life will be held at 4 p.m. Monday at the
Donavon Wooley Performing Arts Center at Clatskanie Middle/High
School. Nonperishable food donations for Turning Point will be
accepted at the service.

For more details about her life, see her obituary in the April 7
Daily News.

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